


Second Chances and First Times

by TetrodotoxinB



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, But don't worry we get over that, D/s AU, Dom!Bucky, First Times, Fluff, Fuck Or Die, I'll use all the tropes I want and none of you can stop me, M/M, Men Crying, Painful Sex, Yes this is a fuck or die D/s AU, medical setting, sub!Steve, you're all welcome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-19 16:23:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14241213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TetrodotoxinB/pseuds/TetrodotoxinB
Summary: Steve gets transported to a different universe where there are secondary genders of the Dom and Sub variety. He's dropping hard so the hospital calls in an enhanced Dom to help their enhanced Sub interloper. Bucky and Steve have a lot to say to one another, but first -- SEX!!!





	Second Chances and First Times

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChibiSquirt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/gifts).



> Many thanks to [BrideOfQuiet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brideofquiet/pseuds/brideofquiet) for betaing and helping me whip this into something more readable. 
> 
> And credit to [ICouldDoThisAllDay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/icoulddothisallday/pseuds/icoulddothisallday) because this is our world building for another series.

In retrospect, touching the large glowing obelisk had been a bad idea. Steve understood that clearly now. Even so, he’d gladly take all the “I told you so’s” Tony could offer if only it would get him out of this mess. Obviously, that would not get him out of this mess, but he could dream.

  


His attention abruptly turned back to the situation at hand when the blood pressure cuff on his arm began to tighten again, another ten minutes having passed in the semi-private hospital room since the last time his blood pressure was measured. He sighed.

  


Checking out of the hospital AMA had been roundly dismissed. Apparently, claiming to be Captain America and also Steve Rogers had been a bad combination. Instead, several government agents, poorly disguised as medical personnel, had tried to ask him a very telling myriad of questions. 

  


So now he was trapped, two guards outside his door, and he had the neurological capabilities of a drunk toddler. It was going swimmingly. 

  


“Hi, Mr. Rogers!” chirped a nurse as she came in. “How are you feeling?”

  


Steve had determined that this one was actually a nurse given that she seemed to be doing actual medical procedures. Also, she wasn’t asking him the ridiculous questions that the agents had, questions which were clearly not medically relevant. 

  


“Still tired and dizzy,” he answered.

  


She nodded and frowned sympathetically. “A bad drop like this’ll do it to you. We’re trying to find someone to help you manage. Your unique physiology means it’s taking a little longer than normal to find someone to meet your needs. That and the apparent ‘security risk.’”  The nurse rolled her eyes and shook her head. “I could hold you down in the state you’re in right now, not much of a security risk if you ask me, but of course no one asked me.”

  


Steve chuckled, appreciative that someone else found the whole situation unbearably ridiculous, even if he wasn’t really sure what the situation was. 

  


“It could be a little while until your date gets here. You getting hungry yet?” she asked as she typed on her tablet after listening to his chest and stomach.

  


Food did sound good, but all that came out of Steve’s mouth was, “Date?” 

  


The nurse set her tablet on the foot of the bed and leaned against the railing. “Sorry, that was a bit crass, but you know, you’re in a drop. The most reliable way to take someone in your state down safely is intercourse. I mean we got you stabilized with hormone infusions for now,” she explained, pointing at the IV bags for emphasis, “but your body needs to stabilize naturally.”

  


Steve’s stomach abruptly knotted and the gnawing hunger was gone. “Surely, intercourse is a bit extreme for a solution,” he hedged, hoping that his ongoing confusion wasn’t as apparent to everyone else as it was to him.

  


She scowled and pulled up a chair. “I’ve heard those government guys talking. You’re not from here, are you? And by ‘here’ I mean, Earth, right?”

  


He felt caught out, though he wasn’t sure why. He was definitely from Earth and he hadn’t done anything wrong, other than not listen to Tony… again. “I’m from Earth,” he finally answered, trying and failing to sound confident.

  


“But not this one, right? I mean, we had those alien things here in New York last year and then people kept showing up from other dimensions or whatever. You’re from one of them, aren’t you?”

  


Well, fuck. That answered a few questions, though unfortunately not the most pressing one.

  


“Probably, yeah,” he conceded.

  


She nodded. Were all nurses so cavalier about interdimensional travel? “So I think the birds and the bees might be a bit different here than where you’re from. Do you have doms and subs?”

  


Steve shook his head, the room spinning slowly as he did.

  


“Ah, so that explains it. Doms and subs are secondary genders, different sets of hormones are involved and they have to be regulated or you end up like this,” she said gesturing to Steve and the hospital room. 

  


He raised an eyebrow which shot a bolt of pain to the back of his head. “And the best solution to that, to this condition, is sex?”

  


“Yep,” she said, popping the ‘p’. Then, she frowned, that sympathetic little downturn of her mouth coming back. “That’s probably kinda awful for you, huh?”

  


“Yeah,” he answered absently, wondering who he’d get stuck with. It’d probably be some woman from JSOC that would treat Steve like a mission. Honestly, that would probably be for the best, but it was more the “woman” part of that equation that he took exception to. It would be embarrassing as all hell not to be able to perform but he wasn’t sure that outright admitting that he was queer would do him any better. 

  


“Something on your mind?” she asked after the quiet had dragged out for a bit. 

  


Steve knew that nurses didn’t usually linger like this, but she was making an exception since no one else seemed to be willing to explain to him what in the hell was going on. 

  


“What happens if I refuse her?” Steve asked.

  


She raised an eyebrow. “Well, I doubt it’s going to be a ‘her.’ I don’t know why, but they sent for a man. As for if you refuse, I mean no one will force you. That much is still your choice, but you won’t last much longer. Your neurological symptoms will get worse. You may not remember being brought in, but you’ve already had several major seizures. After a while, even your enhancements won’t be enough to stop the degeneration.” 

  


“So I’ll die?”

  


“Yeah, you will,” she confirmed gravely.

  


Steve grimaced but didn’t say anything. He’d survived typhoid, TB, the flu, countless battles with pneumonia and bronchitis, not to mention war, being frozen for seventy years, and being shot at and stabbed quite a bit. A bit of sex when he was woozy wasn’t exactly going to be the worst thing he’d ever faced. Besides, it’d been a while since he’d gotten laid. Maybe he could have a little fun with this. 

  


The nurse chuckled. Steve’s attention flicked back to her, and he realized he was probably blushing, which was very telling. She smiled and he blushed harder. “Sorry you’re stuck in this position, but I’m glad you’re planning to make the best of it.”

  


Steve felt his ears burn with embarrassment, and she patted his knee. “Let me know if you need anything or if you have any more questions.”

  


“Thanks.” She was halfway to the door when he called out, “Oh, uh, about that food?”

  


A bright smile came over the nurse’s face. “I’ll put in an order.”

  


The door clicked shut behind her. Steve closed his eyes, hoping the room would stop its constant spinning. He was relatively sure that the nurse was being honest about physiology in this universe, but the idea that his physiology just magically changed when he ended up wherever “here” was seemed ridiculous. 

  


Carefully and quietly, he peeled the leads off and silenced the alarms on the monitor on the wall. Then he pulled off the blood pressure cuff and began picking at the tape on the IV. It was only the work of a few seconds to get the tape pulled up enough to pull the IV free. Then he slipped out of the bed and onto his feet. 

  


He hadn’t been drunk since before the serum, but from what he could remember, this was a lot like it. He shook his head to clear it and made his way towards the door. He let go of the bed railing and took two steps before his legs gave out. The smell of old coffee and ripe fruit that had been too long in the sun overwhelmed him. e closed his eyes, then turned his head and threw up on the floor.

  


When he blinked his eyes open again, his head was swimming. He figured he must be on his back on the floor because he was looking right at the ceiling, but the floor was neither cold enough nor hard enough to actually be floor. Moving his hands around, he discovered that he was again in a bed.

  


Someone cleared their throat and Steve, with what felt like the force of curling a helicopter, turned his head. The nurse sat in a chair by his bed looking very unimpressed.

  


“That was dumb,” she said. “Your little stunt sent you into shock, again. You had several seizures,  _ again _ , all before we could stabilize you. _Again_.”

  


She sounded really put out that Steve had been so careless to undo all her hard work. Casting his senses around his body, he found two main things. Number one: the IV was back with a friend and so was all the monitoring equipment. And two: every joint in his body hurt. It was like rheumatic fever, just minus the fever.

  


Sudden yelling in the corridor outside the hospital room had the nurse turning her head before looking back down at her phone. “Your date’s here, if you couldn’t tell.”

  


Steve listened to the shouting, which was clearly one-sided, and gave up any hope of escape. Maybe he could fuck this guy and earn his AMA discharge. It seemed far-fetched at this point, but he was willing to try.

  


“He’s a real gentleman, that one,” the nurse said. Steve narrowed his eyes, trying to determine if she was being sarcastic or not.

  


“Oh,” she said, looking up and seeing his expression. “No really. Those government guys want him to put you down, whether or not you want him to. He’s having an argument about that, explaining what constitutes consent and therefore also rape. I’d go on a date with him. Of course, half of America would go on a date with Cap so I mean…” She trailed off and then looked back at Steve. “No offense, or anything.”

  


“None taken,” he replied mechanically. He was trying to consider who might be Cap in his place in this dimension while also attempting to eavesdrop on the conversation — argument really — outside the door. Unfortunately, the aftereffects of the seizure left him feeling fuzzy, his thoughts slipping through his fingers like trying to catch water in open hands. 

  


The clarity he’d had when he first woke was fading, and Steve found himself only able to reach consciousness every now and again. It must have been sometime later when he fully awoke, his mind clearer and the pain in his joints subsided. 

  


There was no clock for him to check the time with and no window with which he might judge the movement of the sun. Instead, the quietly humming fluorescent lights buzzed above him. He could only wonder how long he’d been out.

  


Something moved out of the corner of Steve’s eye. There was a man in the chair by his bed now, and he was flicking his fingers over the surface of a tablet. Dark hair covered the top of his head, but he was wearing the suit that Steve usually wore. The Cap suit. This man, the one he was supposed to have sex with, was his replacement in this universe.

  


When the man looked up at him, Steve froze.

  


Bucky. Bucky was Captain America. 

  


“Bucky,” he croaked, his voice already shattered. Steve tried to sit up, but fell back to the bed, already dizzy and exhausted from that minimal effort.

Bucky got up and came to sit on the edge of the bed next to Steve. “Hey, punk. You don’t look so hot.”

  


“You’re alive,” Steve said. 

  


Bucky chuckled and took Steve’s hand in his. “Looks like it,” he said quietly, looking at the back of Steve’s hand where his thumb ran gently over the place where the last IV had been. Then he forced a smile. “Well,you ready to get this show on the road?” Bucky asked with a coy smile, that didn’t make it to his eyes.

  


Steve blinked, still caught by the sight of him. “But if you’re Cap…”

  


Bucky’s fake smile withered. He looked down to Steve’s hand, wrapping one of his around it. “You died. We took a train through the Swiss Alps. It was winter. You gave me your shield when I ran out of ammo and while I was ducked down behind it some asshole with an energy rifle blasted you. One minute you were there. Next minute you weren’t. But someone still had to finish what you started,” he explained, sounding tired and numb.

  


Steve squeezed Bucky’s hand back. “Did you crash the Valkyrie, too?” 

  


“Spent two fucking days bobbing like a cork, waiting for Peggy and Howard to come get me. Swear to god my balls stayed up by my liver for the next decade after all that cold water.”

  


“Wait,” Steve stammered. “They rescued you?”

  


“‘Course they did. I gave ‘em the goddamn coordinates before I went down. What, you didn’t?”

  


Steve stared blankly at Bucky as realization washed over his face. “Of course you fucking didn’t. You moron. No, you told Peggy some sappy shit over the radio while you plummeted towards the ice. And then what? Now you’re here?”

  


Shit. Bucky was gonna ream him for this. “Not exactly. I, uh, froze. For seventy years. SHIELD found me and thawed me and I joined the Avengers.”

  


“Are you stupid in every universe, Rogers? Jesus H. Christ. How long was I dead before you pulled that stunt, huh?” Bucky snapped, still looking thoughtfully at where their hands were joined. Any anger in his voice was negated by the gentleness, even reverence in his touch. It made Steve want to cry.

  


Instead he turned his head, looking at the far wall, while he composed himself. “Four days,” he answered.

  


“Four goddamn days, and you lose all sense of self-preservation,” Bucky said. “I wish I could say I was surprised.”

  


Steve smiled, remembering how Bucky used to ask him how he was born without any sense of either the self-preservation or common varieties. 

  


“Look, pal. I wanna talk to you. I do. I think we got a lot to catch up on. But right now, we need to get you down properly and out of this drop. Let’s just go have a good time and we can sort the rest later. Sound good?” Bucky suggested quietly.

  


“Sure, Bucky. Whatever you say,” Steve replied.

  


“Alright, well, let’s page that nurse.”

  


*

  


They ended up in a room that was furnished a bit more like an actual bedroom. The walls were actual colors, and there was a real bed. The nurse set up the monitoring equipment — Steve still had to keep that, as well as one of the IVs, but the screen that it was plugged into got turned off and silenced so there was some semblance of normalcy. 

  


Once the nurse gave Bucky the go-ahead, he scooped Steve off the bed bridal-style, and gently deposited him on the new bed. The sheets were better, and though the mattress wasn’t great, it had more give. Steve tried not to think too hard about those details. 

  


And then they were alone.

  


Bucky turned the knob on the deadbolt, locking it, and began shucking the suit. Boots and socks first, then the reinforced jacket, followed by the pants and undershirt. He laid the suit over the back of the chair to the left of the bed, and then came to sit next to Steve. For all the swagger Bucky had in his step, all Steve could see was the mechanical way that Bucky had stripped. Like it was a job, a mission to complete.

  


“Look, I’m not gonna pretend that there isn’t a lot at stake. The choice you make is gonna determine whether you live or die. But either way, I’ll respect it. Whatever you want, Steve. I’m with you ‘til the end of the line.”

  


Steve’s eyes did well up at that, but he blinked the tears away. Bucky might care, but this was a mission of a sort and there was a lot on the line. Crying wouldn’t help the matter, and besides, there wasn’t anything sexy about crying before making time with his dead friend. 

  


“Let’s do it. I’d rather not die. And on the off-chance this doesn’t work, at least I’ll have gotten laid recently,” he said with a smile, that he didn’t feel.

  


But Bucky laughed and nodded, the tension broken. “Sounds like a plan if I ever heard one. Here,” he said, pulling apart the snaps on the gown at Steve’s shoulder, “let me help you out of this ugly thing.”

  


Steve shifted and moved as best he could while Bucky tugged the gown free. Then he was naked, laid out in front of Bucky. Steve wondered exactly what he would have the energy or coordination to do.

  


But Bucky seemed to lack any such hesitation. He shucked his underwear and then moved up beside Steve, lying down.

  


“How do you feel about kissing?” Bucky said, his hand already splayed over Steve’s chest, fingers neither seeking nor avoiding the leads and wires.

  


Steve tried to shrug, which was not very effective in the prone position, before saying, “Fine, I guess.”

  


“You guess?”

  


“Yeah, I mean, it sounds fine,” Steve answered a tad defensively.

  


“I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the lack of secondary gender in your world means you and I haven’t ever fucked?” 

  


Steve narrowed his eyes and Bucky laughed. 

  


“You were out for a while. Your nurse filled me in,” he explained.

  


“No, you and I never fucked.”

  


“Well, in this universe we never did either. I was just curious,” Bucky said, his fingers tracing idle patterns on Steve’s chest. Steve felt the urge to punch Bucky for being such a jerk, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth all the effort.

  


“Have you ever done this with a guy before?” Bucky asked, abruptly turning Steve’s amused ire into shocked anxiety.

  


“No,” Steve answered, a little too quickly for his dignity. 

  


“That’s alright. I can show you the ropes. All you have to do is relax,” Bucky said.

  


His voice carried a note of authority such that Steve felt that he  _ had _ to relax. It wasn’t a suggestion or request. Bucky was ordering him. Immediately, his adrenaline spiked and his heart rate jumped accordingly. There were always various types of compulsion, in any universe or dimension or whatever, but no matter the type, he wouldn’t let someone force him to bed. This choice, however shitty it was, would be his and his alone. Rather than relax, he felt his whole body go tense.

  


“Woah, hey. What happened?” Bucky asked.

  


“Sex is really the only way people manage their hormones? No one does anything different?” Steve asked angrily.

  


Bucky propped himself up on his elbow and shrugged with one shoulder. “I mean, sure, there are other ways — yoga, meditation, prayer, running, Sufi dancing. There’s a ton of stuff. But sex is the only surefire way, and the other techniques take years to perfect. You don’t have that kind of time. This is a hotfix for an immediate problem.”

  


Steve sighed again. The nausea was getting worse and his head felt like it was splitting in two, nevermind that the room was still spinning. If they were going to do this, now was the time, before he felt so ill that he couldn’t be a willing or active participant.

  


“Alright then, let’s do it,” Steve said, his mind made up.

  


Bucky nodded, but didn’t smile. “We’ll start slow and work up to the main event.”

  


At Steve’s nod, Bucky leaned down from where he had propped himself up. Gently, tenderly, like he was touching something that had long since broken and been repaired but might still fall apart again at the slightest provocation, he kissed Steve. 

  


Steve gasped at the touch and chased it, lifting his head from the pillow. He’d kissed before, an electric thing where every sensation went straight to his dick, but this kiss was something else entirely. His body lit up along every nerve fiber and his head swam with the touch. Bucky’s tongue lightly traced the outline of his lips as they kissed, and Steve moaned. But even more than the sensation was the thundering of his heart telling him to grab Bucky now and never, ever let go again.

  


The universe narrowed to that moment, to them, and Steve forgot everything else going on around him. He swam in the sensations that flooded his body from the kiss until the tide of sensation began to ebb.

  


Only then did Bucky pull away. “Lemme grab something,” Bucky murmured as he rolled over to the nightstand beside the bed. 

  


Steve watched, getting an eyeful of Bucky and his incredible ass — how had Steve never noticed Bucky’s ass before? — and Bucky came back with lube and a smile.

  


“Spread your legs a little,” he instructed, and though the compulsion from before grabbed at Steve, he didn’t fight it. Suddenly, even through the anxiety, he found himself  _ wanting _ to do what Bucky was suggesting.

  


Bucky thoroughly coated the first three fingers of his right hand with lube and scooted up closer alongside Steve. “If you’ve never done this before, it’s probably not gonna feel great at first,” he warned.

  


Steve nodded and watched as Bucky’s hand dipped between his legs, bypassing his very hard cock entirely. 

  


The first brush of Bucky’s fingers against his hole startled Steve a little and Bucky pulled back slightly.

  


“Just relax into it. Shouldn’t be uncomfortable for too long,” Bucky assured him.

  


Steve drew a deep breath, and Bucky’s fingers came back again, this time with one of them pushing insistently. Steve felt it slip in, and he stifled a gasp. 

  


“How many times in a row can you get off?” Bucky asked, his finger beginning to pump in an out of Steve slowly.

  


Steve managed a semi-suave expression in the face of someone’s finger in his ass, an eyebrow arched up in askance. “Why?”

  


Bucky grinned mischievously. “‘Cause I can get off at least twice — thought you might be able to, too. Could make this part more fun for you.”

  


“Yeah, two or three times is normal for me,” Steve answered.

  


“Great.” Bucky promptly leaned forward to suck Steve’s dick halfway into his mouth. 

  


It was hot and wet and dear god, Bucky’s tongue was sinfully talented. Steve let his eyes close and the strange sensation of something invading him faded into background noise. He rode the waves of pleasure, climbing higher and higher like a wave threatening to break, and then he was coming into Bucky’s mouth. He came for forever and also no time at all, and then he was sagging back to the mattress. Bucky popped off Steve’s dick with a wet noise that had to be entirely intentional, and then he rolled away.

  


When he came back to himself, he blinked at Bucky who had cleaned off his right hand, and was getting himself a drink. 

  


“You ready for the main event?” Bucky asked, setting the bottle of water back down on the nightstand.

  


Steve suddenly realized he completely missed what was happening with his ass. “You finished with what you were doing?”

  


“Yep, had all three fingers in there, easy as you please.”

  


Steve swallowed. His erection was still standing out proudly, hardly depleted from one orgasm, no matter how spectacular. Even so, the arousal he felt wasn’t enough to make him particularly excited by the prospect. Now that it was imminent, it felt much less exciting, and much more threatening.

  


Nevertheless, Steve grinned in a way that he hoped didn’t look forced and said, “Let’s get to it.”

  


Maybe Bucky missed the distress, or maybe he ignored it because there was nothing to do or say, but he simply smiled in reply and crawled up the bed. Bucky slicked himself liberally and then added more to his fingers, which he then pressed into Steve. 

  


It was an awkward and unpleasant sensation, all three of those fingers inside him at once. Steve could feel the callouses on the tips of Bucky’s fingers on his sensitive rim and squirmed. Bucky retracted his fingers, wiped them on a small hand-towel, and sat up on his knees, shimmying forward between Steve’s legs.

  


“Can you bend your knees and plant your feet?” Bucky asked.

  


Steve tried. He almost got his right leg up before it flopped over. Apparently feeling better, as his headache had significantly abated and the room had almost stopped spinning, was not the same as being better. He shook his head.

  


“Hey, that’s alright,” Bucky said, in a way that somehow didn’t make Steve feel like shit for being a living ragdoll. 

  


He lifted Steve’s legs and shoved a doubled over pillow under his ass. Then, he leaned forward, arms under Steve’s legs, the head of his cock just touching Steve’s ass cheeks.

  


“Bear down a little, it helps, and don’t clench, alright?” Bucky instructed. 

  


Steve nodded and Bucky leaned forward again, and then paused. “You good?”

  


“Yeah, I’m good,” Steve said, but thinking it was an utter lie. 

  


“I’m gonna take you at your word,” Bucky warned, his playful smile from moments ago replaced with utter seriousness that belied the gravity of what they were doing.

  


Steve was grateful that Bucky wasn’t going to try to read him or baby him based on some bullshit — or in this case probably not bullshit — psychoanalytical nonsense. In any case, it didn’t matter, because Bucky was pressing forward and into Steve. 

  


It hurt, and Steve thought for sure that Bucky had to be missing the mark. The pressure felt like he was digging hard into tender, fragile skin somewhere near, but not quite on, his hole. Like the skin would just be pushed and pushed, but with no way to actually give until something tore painfully. But just as the pain mounted to the point that he considered asking Bucky to ease off, he felt something give and Bucky said, “Relax and bear down.”

  


Steve couldn’t really figure out how to relax but he did bear down, and he could feel as Bucky breached. And fuck that  _ hurt _ . He breathed hard through his nose and tried not to make a sound or give away his discomfort on his face. Bucky must have caught it anyway because he leaned forward over Steve. As he moved, the sensation of being split and the horrible burning — different from the pain of before — increased, and he gasped as Bucky slid deeper.

  


“Stevie,” Bucky said. It was almost a murmur, and for a moment it caught Steve off-guard with the intimacy and tenderness that it conveyed.  “Pal, you’re going to have to relax and trust me.”

  


Steve nodded, almost frantically, desperate for relief and wounded that Bucky felt he had to ask for his trust. He trusted Bucky, of course he trusted Bucky — he always had. He managed to will enough coordination and strength into his hands to reach up and touch Bucky’s face. “I do. Trust you, I mean,” Steve murmured back.

  


Bucky smiled, and the long hair on the top of his head — still cut like Steve remembered it back in the war — flopped a little over his forehead. “‘Course you do. I’m the smart one.”

  


Steve laughed, losing coordination in one of his hands, and it slumped gracelessly back to the bed. Bucky leaned down, chasing Steve’s lips with his own, and gave his hips an experimental roll. Steve hissed.

  


“Stay with me, baby,” Bucky murmured as he rolled his hips again, his lips only an inch from Steve’s. But Steve’s eyes scrunched shut and his forehead creased.

  


“Hey, hey, if you tense up your face, you’ll tense up your ass. Let it go. You said you trusted me right?” Bucky asked.

  


“Yeah, yeah,” Steve said with a strained voice.

  


“Okay, well, trust me then. I’m not gonna give you more than you can take.”

  


Steve nodded and unfurrowed his brow bit by bit. Bucky kissed Steve a little more without taking it deeper. Steve started to relax, the pain ebbing by increments. Then Bucky started to rise back up on his knees. Immediately, Steve flung an uncoordinated arm out at Bucky.

  


“Hey, I’m not going anywhere. Just getting on my knees. It’s a better angle and that way I can get a hand on you. Should make everything feel better,” Bucky explained. 

  


Steve shook his head, suddenly bereft of Bucky and the comfort of his presence, frantic to get back the skin-to-skin contact he had just had. “Need to touch you,” he slurred.

  


Bucky smiled, a warm smile, one that showed relief and happiness untinged with grief. It was different from his other smiles, Steve realized, but he couldn’t place why. 

  


“Sure, Steve, sure. We can do that,” Bucky answered, sounding indulgent but not in the least bit put out by it.

  


As soon as Bucky draped back over him and helped Steve reposition his legs, Steve relaxed, feeling content and safe for the first time since he got to wherever the hell he was. Bucky was still rolling his hips, fucking into him deeply but slowly, but the burning pain was gone. Instead, he felt light and floaty. Everything was pleasure, but without the hurried urgency that sex or masturbation usually came with. 

  


Steve forced his hands back up and clumsily threaded them through Bucky’s hair, pulling his head down so that Steve could lift his head to chase Bucky’s lips. A bit of loose tape from one of his IVs momentarily stuck to some of Bucky’s hair, but he didn’t care. Instead, Steve decided that those lips were, in fact, the best lips in all the multiverse — his brain suddenly recalling the word for this giant cosmic shenanigan — and he wondered how in the hell he let Bucky go off to war without ever getting up enough courage to do with him exactly what they were doing now. 

  


Bucky kissed back enthusiastically, murmuring in Steve’s ear in between kisses when Steve was nipping at his jaw or licking the shell of his ear.

  


“You’re being so good, Stevie. So strong. Taking everything I give you. I’m so proud.”

  


The babble felt good. Affirming. Comforting. It was everything he would have given anything to hear from Bucky way back when. 

  


And as Bucky rocked into him, harder now and more urgent, Steve felt his urgency grow, too. He tried to thread a hand in between them, to pull himself off, but he got his hand and the associated IV line tangled in the monitoring wires that were coming from his chest and arm. Bucky, breathless but laughing, lifted up an arm to untangle the mess and then slipped that hand between them instead. Steve was grateful, still too uncoordinated to really get anything accomplished, and the strong tug of Bucky’s hand on his dick felt great. 

  


Bucky fucked him in earnest then, the tentative stokes growing forceful and rough. Steve gave himself over to the force of what had to be the down everyone was talking about. It was like being caught in a riptide, but instead of terror he felt euphoria. Every touch was pleasure and all the walls around his heart crumbled, seeming no longer important in the face of everything else. The universe, and every probability in it, was reduced to the places where Bucky touched him — the places where Bucky was his and he was Bucky’s. 

  


They came, not quite in unison, but close enough together that it didn’t matter. After a few moments to come down from the rush, Bucky gently pulled out to collapse beside Steve. Steve whined at the loss and snuggled closer into Bucky.

  


He felt split open in an entirely different way now. Every fear and regret welling up through the break in him at once. “I’m sorry,” he said through tears. “I’m sorry I didn’t catch you. I’m sorry.”

  


Bucky pulled him tight, pressing his forehead to Steve’s. “‘S not your fault. I missed the guy behind you and didn’t cover. I think we’re square,” he said with a laugh that was clearly trying not be a sob. 

  


But Steve was so far gone, his walls down for the first time, possibly since he first began building them, and he cried without shame. 

  


“I love you, Buck. I’m sorry I never said it when it counted, but I’m so glad I can say it now. Thank you for this,” he said, his voice cracking on every word.

  


And then Bucky wept, sobbing big, hitching breaths along with Steve. “I love you, too, Stevie. I love you, too. But it counts now. It still counts now.”

  


Steve nodded vigorously and his forehead rubbed against Bucky’s. They stayed like that, curled around one another, crying out the grief that they carried for each other. Steve was grateful for whatever had landed him here. He knew he had to go back, to fight in his universe. But for now he was grateful. He’d never had the chance to say goodbye to Bucky before, but he did now. He had apologized for not catching him and he could apologize for not sending him home as soon as they pulled him off Zola’s table. It was closure and resolution. And more than that, he could enjoy this chance, no matter how temporary.

  
  



End file.
